


sleigh bells in the snow

by jolybird



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blizzards & Snowstorms, Engagement, F/M, Quidditch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:07:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21576541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolybird/pseuds/jolybird
Summary: The Weasley's love to come together during the holidays, they really, truly, do. But when a blizzard strikes Devon, being cooped up in the Burrow starts to make even Harry a little stir crazy. Thus the birth of what is sure to be a new family tradition: Blizzard Quidditch.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12
Collections: HP Holiday Mini Fest 2019





	sleigh bells in the snow

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you K for the beta!! This is SUCH a good prompt and it delightfully took me in a direction I wasn't expecting but one that I absolutely ADORE. Thank you mods for hosting!!

“Are you _kidding_?” Ginny shouted, twisting out of the way of a tree branch. “Do you _know_ how many kinds of illegal that move just was?”

Whichever cheat of a brother had just bodily stolen the quaffle from her had vanished into the whiteout and she screamed in frustration, squinting into the blowing snow to try to find what direction he had gone. She was off the pitch, given the tree, and Dad was sending giggle jinxes at whoever got too close to the house (Fleur’s jinx still hadn’t subsided last time they passed each other in the blizzard), so there were only two directions he could have gone in.

It had been snowing for days and enough had finally been enough. George had snapped his arm near clean in half trying to surf Vic’s tiny toy broom down the stairs. Uncharistically, Mum had laughed herself silly and Harry ended up being the one to set his arm (all while laughing _‘last time I saw someone do this, they removed all the bones in my arm,_ ’ which only made George and Mum laugh harder). They were going stir crazy spending the holidays cooped up in their childhood home, so they bundled up, wrapped warming charms on themselves (Ron sometimes went too fast with his and would scream as the cold hit him—that’s how you knew where the second illegal quaffle was) and headed out for a quick (Gin was pretty sure it had been two hours by now) game of Quidditch.

Perce, Hermione and Vic were seated on lawn chairs in the middle of the yard. They had a bubble charm cast around them to keep out both the snow and the biting chill. Hermione had her feet kicked up and Perce and Vic had sunglasses on. Fat lot of good it was doing them in the snow. Hermione had somehow charmed the hoops to keep score for them, though, so it wasn’t as if they needed to see the pitch.

Vic and Fleur had thought it was an absolutely hilarious idea to tie bells around the ends of everyone’s brooms, and it sounded like Father Christmas and all his reindeer were having a free-for-all in the blizzard. She was half expecting to see a red light any moment to save them and show them the way. Although, given the fit of excitement Vic had had upon seeing Harry’s patronus several days ago (he and George had upended a box that had some kind of sticking solution in the attic, and they’d had to send for help when Charlie was too busy laughing at them to try to unstick them), it was probably for the best if Rudolph didn’t make an appearance.

Ron swore from somewhere to her left, and she darted off in that direction. She was headed away from the house, back in the direction of the pitch. The hoops should be—there! She twisted to the right and shot through the center of the middle hoop.

“Yay, Aunt Gin!” Vic shouted from somewhere in the distance. She could hear the bells on Bill’s broom; he was playing keeper for the opposing team after Ron had decided to switch mid-game and take over as chaser. She didn’t know how that was working out for him.

“Did you score?” Bill asked from somewhere close by.

“Not this time, but give me a minute and I’ll be back.” Ginny darted away from him, trying to find someone—anyone—so she could score again. She was pretty sure they were winning by well over a hundred, but seeing as she had absolutely no idea where the other end of the pitch even was right now, it was possible the opposing group of siblings weren’t that far behind.

Through the billowing snow, she saw a figure standing on the ground below her; if she was headed in the right direction, they were standing on the pitch. Her lips twisted into a frown and she headed down to check out what was going on.

As she got closer, she could see it was Harry standing in the middle of the pitch a couple of feet below her, squinting up at the sky. She tilted her broom down until she entered the bubble charm he’d cast around him, and the blizzard vanished.

“What are you doing?” She asked carefully, hopping off her broom and holding it behind her. His own broom was on the ground, but she was taking no chances, as Harry was the opposing team’s seeker and there was no such thing as loyalty when it came to quidditch. Or at least, that’s what Charlie had said when he broke Bill’s nose during a game with some of their old schoolmates on holiday last summer. Hannah had accidently caught the snitch at the last second, beating Harry by mere inches, and she was still lauded as a hero by Neville, Dean, Seamus and Ron. Ginny didn’t need another reason to absolutely love the woman (she had been an absolute rock during Ginny’s first seventh year, and had made her final year at Hogwarts somehow enjoyable, despite everything), but Harry’s face had been _incredible_.

“I was thinking,” he said, uncharastically nervous. If he was playing her to try to steal her broom, she was going to hex him straight into the new year. “I’ve been thinking for a while, and...our lives haven’t been peaceful and quiet. Ever. Literally _ever_. And I don’t _want_ them to be. I want our lives to stay sold-out quidditch games and rounding up our friends for long holidays and being snowed in with your family—”

“ _Our_ family, really,” Ginny cut in. “Most of the time my brothers like you more than me.” Apparently, Harry’s nerves were contagious.

Harry smiled and took her hands. She let her broom drop to the ground. His hands were shaking, which was _crazy_ , given the shit they’d gone through when they were literally school kids and the crazy-scary things Harry was currently doing for the Ministry. She wasn’t a dark wizard hungry for his blood or a magical creature stalking him in the night. She was just, well… _her_. And, okay, she was a famous chaser now and there had been a few instances so far of people screaming her name and asking for autographs, but Harry’d known her before all that. He knew her when she was just a silly little girl with a crush on her brother’s best friend. He knew her when all she wanted to do was play quidditch, schoolwork be damned. (That _had_ actually worked out for her, so.)

“I want this to keep being our lives,” Harry continued, smiling. Ginny echoed it before she tilted her head.

“Why would this change? Do you have plans to spend Christmas with some other family?”

“No!” Harry laughed, and then ran a hand through his hair, messing it up. Ginny had opted for a hat and scarf, but Harry was playing the ‘ _I’m a wizard, and my heating charm means I don’t have to dress for the blizzard’_ game. “I want to spend every single Christmas with our family. I want to be in the stands at every one of your games, cheering you on. I want to come home from work and have to dodge your Bat-Bogey Hex because I’ve woken you up and you’ve got practice in a couple hours. You are the most important person in the world to me—”

“Oh, don’t let Ron hear you say that,” Ginny said with a gasp, looking around.

On cue, there was a jingle of bells and the sound of Ron swearing loudly. A red blur shot across the sky above them and then vanished back into the storm. Ginny looked to Harry with an eyebrow raised and he glanced around before repeating, quieter this time, “You’re the most important person in the world to me. I love you more than I ever thought possible. I want nothing more than to spend every single day with you, even when you’re cross with me because I ate the last of your mum’s bread pudding. Especially when I want the world to leave me alone for just one single day.”

Ginny’s smile was so wide her cheeks hurt, and she looked around to see if anyone was seeing this—but of course they couldn’t, because they had decided to play quidditch in the worst snowstorm Ottery St Catchpole had seen in two decades. She pulled her gloves off and threw them on the ground. Harry laughed and she laughed and then he fumbled around in his pocket.

Her heart dropped; if it had slipped out of his pocket, they wouldn’t find it until spring.

Harry pulled a little fabric bag out of his pocket and then dropped to one knee—right in the middle of their backyard quidditch pitch, right in the middle of a blizzard. He pulled out a ring and held it up for her to see. She watched his face, trying to commit to memory the brightness of his eyes and the way he couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

“Ginevra Molly Weasley,” Harry said, holding her hand tight. “Will you marry me?”

Ginny had a _lot_ to say about this (especially, but not limited to, _Ginevra?_ ), but all she could do was nod her head and laugh. Harry slipped the ring on her finger and she all but flung herself down to kiss him. They broke apart, laughing, and she pulled him back to his feet. He wrapped his arms around her tighter and hugged her as they sort of swayed on the spot, enjoying the moment.

Charlie suddenly came barreling down at them, did a barrel roll past them, and then was on the ground cheering. Ginny turned to him while still in Harry’s arms, absolutely beaming. She hadn’t even felt this happy when the Harpies won back-to-back championships.

“We won!” Charlie shouted, fist thrown triumphantly in the air. “Take that, you sodding know-it-all! Who’s the best seeker in the family now?”

Ginny’s teeth clicked together as her smile fell and turned to Harry, who looked absolutely shattered. Somehow she had been largely absent from pretty much all of Harry and Charlie’s argument over who was the best seeker out of the Weasleys, but it was vicious and serious, according to those who’d had the misfortune of being close by.

“Thanks, Gin, on the distraction!” Charlie smiled wide and bounced over to them. He pulled Ginny into his arms and spun her around. “The Harpies are bound to win the league again this year with you as their star chaser!”

“Of course we’re going to win the league! We have to defend our two-year title!” Ginny laughed and let Charlie spin her around. She did like defending her title, after all; it was a matter of pride.

Harry had his hands on his hips, but the smile on his face was bemused. Ginny smiled back at him as Fleur came crashing down.

“This is why I protested having two professional quidditch players on the same team! We were crushed! Two hundred and twenty to ten, and that’s before the snitch! Harry, where’s Ron, I told the both of you that just because you both _might have gone professional_ had you not become Aurors doesn’t mean you can defeat two current professional players! One of whom was named top chaser of the league last year!” Even though she was yelling, Fleur couldn’t disguise the pride in her voice at the last bit.

“How do you know what the score is?” Harry asked earnestly.

“Um, I asked Hermione and Percy?” Fleur had her hands on her hips. “You know, the ones who are in charge of keeping score?”

“Did you catch it?” Oliver called from above them. Perce’s boyfriend was somehow doing a stand-up job as keeper this match (unlike the last time the Harpies played Puddlemere and she had scored on him a whopping seven times) despite the fact he could see, at most, two hoops at once. Ginny had scored on both Bill and Ron both without them noticing a couple of times.

“He caught it! We won!” Ginny called up, and he came crashing down a moment later in a loud jingle of bells.

There was another crash of bells behind them as George and Ron landed, both laughing wildly. “Nearly did the Death Eaters’ job for them!” George howled with laughter, holding both of their brooms.

“Maybe if you watched where you were going—” Ron tried to argue back, but his laughter nulled the threat. Ginny reached down and picked up her gloves, putting them back on as she shot Harry a quiet little smile. His smile was instantly back on his face and he wrapped an arm around her as he led her back to the house.

Oliver looked around. “I’ll go tell Perce and Hermione the match is over.”

“Last I saw, all three of them looked to be asleep,” Fleur told him as he ran off through the snow, broom slung over his shoulder.

“Ey, Gin!” George called, high-fiving her. She caught his eye and then slipped out from under Harry’s arm so she and George could lift Charlie up in the air. He shouted a warning, but they carried him across the field back to the house.

Mum was at the back door, shaking her head at them. “Get inside before you all catch colds.”

They dumped Charlie unceremoniously in the doorway. He stumbled and nearly fell headfirst into the house, but caught himself last-minute and spun around, sending an incredibly rude gesture to his absolutely loving siblings and teammates. Ginny and George went inside, shaking their heads at his outstanding lack of sportsmanship.

“I’m guessing you lot won?” Mum asked, kissing Gin’s head. “That’s my girl.”

“Oi!” George and Charlie protested, and she went over and kissed their heads as well. Oliver came inside with Hermione, Perce and Vic. He was still sitting on his broom, flying shoulder-height with Hermione, who looked to be the one keeping the broom aloft. Mum went over and kissed Oliver on the forehead as well, and he blushed.

Perce rolled his eyes at whatever he whispered and squeezed his hand. Oliver had been more anxious when he arrived at the Burrow then he ever seemed before a quidditch game, which was absolutely adorable, and Ginny hoped he never left. She pulled her outerwear off, careful of her gloves. Already the ring felt natural on her finger. She twisted the band to straighten it and smiled as she finally got a good look.

She gasped. _Oh_ —this was Nana’s ring. Ginny looked around for Harry, but he was in the middle of Bill, Ron and Charlie, who were in the midst of teasing him. He must have spoken to her parents, or one of them must have just given him the ring for when the time came. How long had he been planning this and kept it a secret? How long had her _parents_ kept quiet?

Ron’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Yeah, well, if _someone_ hadn’t stopped playing for a quick mid-game snog—”

Ginny let go of the ring and turned to them. “Oi! Leave my fiance alone, you were already losing two hundred and twenty to ten!”

“We were not,” Ron and Bill protested in unison.

“We charmed the hoops to keep score on Percy’s watch; that’s _exactly_ how much you were losing by,” Hermione pointed out, pulling her necklace out of Vic’s hands and switching the little girl over to her other hip.

“Really?” Perce asked Ginny, ignoring the argument about the game entirely. Hermione glanced at him and looked like she was about to ask how he didn’t know they had been keeping score with his watch.

Ginny smiled at him and held up her hand. “Really.”

Perce stode over and pulled both Harry and Ginny into a tight hug. Mum ran over a moment later, looking at the pair of them. She dug around for Ginny’s hand and gave a little cry when she saw the ring on her finger.

“You ever get the feeling you’re missing something?” George asked Fleur. A moment later, his eyes went wide. “Oh!”

“‘Oh’ what?” Ron asked, hands on his hips. “What is it?”

“When the hell did this happen?” George demanded. “While you were busy helping us win?”

Ginny nodded over her mother’s shoulder as Mum pulled Harry, Ginny and Perce into another hug. Perce tried to squirm his way out of it, but she held fast. Harry patted him on the back; he had been sucked into several hugs he wasn’t supposed to be a part of during his life.

“Harry, dear, you know you’re already family, but I’m so happy it’s finally official,” Mum said.

“Oi!” Ron called loudly over the room, which was now positively erupting. “Are you bloody serious?”

Hermione laughed and covered her mouth with her free hand. “All these months of you fretting over how you were going to do it, and…”

“I took Ron’s advice and proposed right in the middle of the pitch during a game,” Harry announced.

Ron opened his mouth, then shut it, and shrugged. “I mean, I _guess_ that’s what I said.”

“You’ve been talking about this for months?” Ginny laughed and swatted Harry’s shoulder.

“Oh, like you haven’t been waiting for him to propose since you were ten years old,” George told her, swooping in to hug the pair of them after Mum finally let them go to find their father. He was tinkering around _somewhere_ , with some muggle Christmas toy Harry had found in a London toy shop.

“Please don’t give me the threatening older brother speech,” Harry begged. “I’ve already gotten it at least four times this week.”

George narrowed his eyes, but ultimately shrugged. “We all knew this day was coming, but I’m thrilled it’s finally here.”

“You are all terrible,” Ginny said with a laugh, pushing him away so Hermione and Vic could come hug them. “Uncle Harry and I are going to get married,” she told her niece as she latched onto her. Hermione hugged her quickly and then went to throw her arms around Harry.

Vic’s eyes lit up. “You’re going to have a pretty wedding like Mummy and Daddy had?”

“It’s going to be prettier,” Ginny told her in a loud whisper. “Do you want to know why?”

“Why?” Vic gasped, leaning away from her slightly.

“Because you’re going to be my flower girl.”

Vic gasped and cheered loudly. She hugged Ginny again and then kicked her way to the ground to run over to tell her parents.

“You want your life to stay like this, huh?” Ginny asked Harry after they had been hugged and congratulated by every member of the family and finally earned a quiet moment to themselves. Hermione was already sending word to Luna across the valley, and if Ginny knew her best friend, she’d be at their doorstep any minute and the quiet wouldn’t last.

Harry kissed the top of her head. “Wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Good,” Ginny said, turning around in his arms so that she could look out at her family. “Me either.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fanwork is part of the [HP Holiday Mini Fest](https://mini-fest.livejournal.com/), an on-going anonymous fest. The creator will be revealed at the end of the fest. Please show your appreciation for the creator by leaving a comment below. Thank you!


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